


Race to Escape a Rogues' Gallery (Part 2)

by Aoede



Category: Mach GoGoGo | Speed Racer
Genre: F/M, Gen, Non-Consensual Tickling, Psychological Torture, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 21:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12849450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoede/pseuds/Aoede
Summary: It all started when just about every bad guy and no-gooder I’d ever encountered decided to get together and track me down for their ultimate revenge. One thing led to another and it looked like I was winning — but then they made the unfortunate discovery that I’m very ticklish! Fighting them became difficult, and they eventually overpowered me. Once they captured me and took me to their hideout, they decided to get their revenge that way. After days of particularly diabolical tickle-tortures including a machine, they mentioned something about trapping me in a virtual reality so they could continue to humiliate me. Just before they could do it, I managed to finally escape, Inspector Detector showed up and I finally went home. But during a race the next day, when I pressed a button on the Mach Five it suddenly started tickling me instead!





	1. Awakening False

“Ahahahe cahan’t drive like thihis!” Speed exclaimed, pinning his arms to his sides, and taking his foot off of the accelerator. As he slowly veered off to the side, slowing to a stop, he watched through squinted eyes as the cars behind him quickly passed him.

The announcer was quick to spread the word. “Wait! Now for some reason, the Mach Five has come to a stop on the side of the road, giving up the lead! It’s now in fifth place! …sixth! …seventh! …eighth! If Speed doesn’t get back on track soon, he’ll be dead last and lose the race!”

As he sat struggling to push away the strange mechanical hands and their relentless wiggling fingers, he heard his girlfriend’s voice chime in over the radio. “Speed! What’re you doing? Why’d you stop?”

“Trihixie!” The chestnut-haired one reached for the radio, still wriggling and chuckling helplessly. “Lihisten, I dohon’t know what’s going on, buhut when I trihied pushing the ‘A’ button on the Mach Five’s steeheering wheel ihit — ahaa! A strahange pair of hands came out of nowhere and staharted to tihickle meheheee!” Then reiterated “I CAHAN’T drive lihike thihis! I’ll crahash!”

“Speed, honestly, I don’t know WHAT you’re talking about! Just get going — and FAST! We’ll look into any technical problems when you finish!”

“Trihixiiiie! Youhou KNOHOW how tihicklish I am! I — I caHAn’t —!”  
“Just GO, Speed! GO! HURRY!”

“Ohokay, FINE! Hahang on…” Wincing for a moment, the boy turned the ignition and shifted into gear. Once back on the road, it was easy to catch up and pass the other cars again — even while twitching and snorting as the hands continued to wriggle and rake their fingers under his arms. _Thankfully, my armpits aren’t my biggest tickle spot! But still…I can’t stand it! And what on Earth’s going on? Why would Trixie care more about me winning than me or the Mach Five being okay? Something’s very wrong here! Aahaaha! Okay, I DO need to win, and fast! And get out of this car!_

“Folks, it looks like Speed Racer is back in the race! The Mach Five is now back in fifth — fourth! Third! And now Speed is back in a wide lead in first place! And all the cars are almost at the finish line, this race is almost over! …AND THE MACH FIVE CROSSES IT FIRST! SPEED WINS BY A MILE!”

Finally able to stop the car, the chestnut-haired one let out a small flustered roar, making his usual leap over the door — though the hands seemed to try and grab him, but he still managed to slip away. Taking a few more wide steps farther, he sighed, shuddering and rubbing his sides.

“Speed!”  
“Speedie!”  
“Speed!”  
“Speed!”

On cue, the rest of Team Racer appeared: Trixie, Spritle with Chim-Chim, Pops, and Sparky. They made a small semicircle around him, the brunette giving him a big leaping hug.

“Oh, Speed you did it! Congratulations!” As she withdrew, she asked “Now what was all that nonsense about a malfunction?”

Holding her gently by the waist, Speed still frowned, glancing up at the others, looking into his father’s eyes for a moment. “It wasn’t just a glitch, Trixie! Sparky, Pops — I’m telling you! It —!” He glanced over his shoulder — but the hands had disappeared. Walking back over, he peered inside, across the seats and shift and down by the pedals, but there was no sight of the alarming addition. “Huh? They’re gone! But I KNOW they were here!”

However, when he tried pressing the A Button again, the auto jacks dutifully emerged, lifting the car up.

“Oh…but…”

“See? Looks like everything’s fine after all!” Pops assured him with a chuckle and a light slap on the back. The chestnut-haired one whirled around, brows lightly angled.

“Pops, I’m sorry — but this wasn’t just a matter of something not working! When I pressed that button before, I swear, there were a pair of hands that came out right about here and started tickling me under the arms! And they wouldn’t stop! So I slowed and stopped because I felt like I couldn’t drive like that — I couldn’t keep control of the car, I thought I was going to crash! …but…I guess I did manage…”

And then, the puzzling but disconcerting reactions continued. “Well, so what if you got tickled? A real racer worth his salt has to be able to deal with ANY kind of surprise or distraction while driving!”

The boy’s jaw dropped a little. “POPS! …Don’t you understand? There’s a feature — there’s machinery in the Mach Five that SHOULDN’T BE THERE! You built it! You should know! I KNOW you didn’t put that there! I —!”

His brows lowering as well, the elder Racer stepped forward sharply; making his son jump, shoulders rising, his heart picking up pace slightly. “Speed! Listen to yourself — I think you’re having a tantrum almost as bad as Spritle!”

Said younger brother raised a shaking fist as he protested “HEY! I don’t throw a fit like that!” before folding his arms with a pout and a sideways glance. “Okay, MAYBE sometimes when I don’t get candy when I should — but STILL!”

The older boy’s eyes darted almost as fast as his lips twitched, before he finally continued, pitch rising “I’M NOT having a TANTRUM! POPS, this is SERIOUS!”

“All right, that’s it! It’s time we had a little talk…” With that, the man hoisted his second-oldest son over his shoulder back-to-front and carried him back toward the car, tossing him in the passenger seat before sitting in the driver’s seat and starting the Mach Five up again. He turned, looking at the brunette. “We’ll meet you at home — come to the garage. I think we’re going to have to give Speed some training and I’ll need all of your help!”

The chestnut-haired one sat in a sheepish hunch next to him, though bolted upright with a chill at the last sentence. “Training?! Wait, no! POPS! You don’t understand — wait, no, please!”

“All right, we’ll see you there!” Sparky said, making an OK sign. “And we’ll listen out if anything weird or tickly happens on your way home, all right?”

“It won’t, but okay! See you soon!” the man said, stomping on the accelerator and swerving the car out and away to the main road.

Half-wittingly clutching the door, Speed echoed “No, Pops, please! You don’t understand! This hasn’t got anything to do with that — with me, with my concentration, or —!”

“It’s got EVERYthing to do with all of those things!” the man shot back gruffly, giving him a stern glare. “And once again, this’ll be harder for me than you, but after everything, I can’t have you falling apart on me now!”  
___

The boy stared up wide-eyed at the garage ceiling, weakly struggling in his makeshift bonds, straining to glance at his pacing father “No…Pops — Trixie, Sparky, Spritle, Chim-Chim, PLEASE don’t do this! You’ve got it all wrong!” and looked pleadingly between the others, the older two sitting by his ribs while the younger two sat by his bare feet, clawed fingers at the ready, looking expectantly up at their old man.

“Now, this’ll be simple,” the man said, finally stopping and facing forward, raises a finger. “I’m going to ask you some basic important questions while they all tickle you — and if you can focus on that, then you’ve at least got a shot! …Do you understand, son?”

Nodding weakly, the chesnut-haired one uttered “Mmhm.” Closing his eyes, he thought _No, no, this is all wrong…this is crazy! It’s got to be a dream, I’ve GOT to be dreaming…some kind of weird horrible dream! A nightmare!_

“Okay…ready…begin!” And all four of them started tickling him about as frenziedly as the hands had, making Speed jump and burst out laughing. The boy in the red hat used a polishing brush on his stomach and the brunette frequently slipped her long nails under to his back, making him thrash as his pitch leaped as well.

“AAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHA! NOHOHO! NOOOHO! AIIHEE! I CAHAN’T! I CAN’T STAHAHAND IT! STAHAHAHAP!”

“How many laps and how many miles in the Indy 500?” his father asked calmly.

Gulping down a breath, the boy opened an eye with gritted teeth. “Twohwo-huhundred lahaps, fihive-hundrehed mihihiles!”

“Good! How often should you change a car’s oil?”  
“FiHIve-hundrehed — no! Threeheehee-huhundred miles!”  
“Hmm…all right, I’ll count it. On average how much pressure do you need in a racing tire? Front engine.”  
“Fohorty!”  
“Mid-to-rear engine?”  
“ThiHIrty-fiHIve!”

The man paused, tapping his lips thoughtfully. “Mmm…okay, you’re not doing as badly as I thought.”

“POHOPS, PLEHEASE! I caHAHAn’t BREHEATHE!” The chestnut-haired one begged, eyes briefly wide before squeezing them shut again, writhing. “PLEHEASE make them STAHAAAP!”

“FOCUS, son, FOCUS!”  
“STAHAP! STAHAHAPPIT, PLEASE!”  
“We can’t stop until you convince me you can concentrate like you should through anything!”  
“NOHOHOHOOOO DOHON’T! NOOO!”


	2. Upshifting Plot

Skin still tingling lightly, the boy lay in bed, curled up on his side, covers pulled tight. In the darkness, he outright pouted, even feeling the pang of tears. Not only from the shock and trauma of everything that had happened earlier, but at the nagging realization that his last escape hadn’t been what it seemed.

_No…that means I’m still trapped with Tongue Blaggard, Cruncher Block, Oriena Flux…they really did it. They trapped me in some crazy virtual world where even my own family will tickle me to death at the drop of a hat. …and sure, I’d have tickle fights with Spritle and even Rex when we were younger, but…this is nothing like that. This is wrong. This is awful._ He paused, brushing at his misting eyes. _And now I don’t know if I’ll even ever see my REAL family ever again. I miss them so much!_

He rolled over onto his back, pushing himself to a sit, still hazily staring out at nothing in particular.

_So how am I going to get out of this? …and worse than that, I’ve got another race coming up in a few days! How am I ever going to be able to climb back into the Mach Five now?_

With a sigh, he flopped back down on his pillow, letting his eyelids droop. _Well, either way… He yawned. I’d better try and get some sleep. Even if I am already asleep in some virtual reality nightmare!_  
___

“Hey, Pops, I’m going to go take the Mach Five out for some practice runs!”  
“Okay! Good luck, Speed!”

“Just be back for dinner, all right?” his mother chimed in.

Simpering, the chestnut-haired one bid “Sure, Mom! See you later.”

In the garage, however, Speed stood rigidly beside the driver’s side door, staring at the buttons on the steering wheel. With a flinch and a shake of his head, he finally hopped in. Twisting the ignition, throwing the shift forward, and stomping the gas pedal like clockwork, he rolled out of the garage and down the road. Keeping track of street signs, he decided to take a side road, finding a quiet spot to park — and staring down the buttons once again.

“Let’s see…I tried the auto jacks, but that just tickled me…under the arms. Hmm, A for Armpits? Then, maybe…” He mused aloud, and against his better judgement, decided to jab the B button.

More hands appeared, making a beeline for his stomach. “HAHAhahahaha! Haha! SoHO I was right!” When he reflexively tried pressing the button again, it only sent another pair of hands springing up, making him writhe and laugh harder. “OhoHO NOho! HaHAow do I stahaHAp this?!” Finally, he yanked himself out of the seat and over the door, landing in a less-coordinated crouch. Once out of range, apparently, the hands withdrew and retreated as they had before.

With a head-hanging sigh, he forced himself to get back in the car.

“I’ve got to figure this out — I’ve got to figure this all out before I’m stuck in a race. Or Pops or Trixie or anybody else asks me why I haven’t been using the Mach Five like normal lately…mmnn…here goes…”

Surprisingly, the C button only triggered the cutter blades as normal. “Huh. I guess there aren’t any tickle spots that start with C…chin, maybe? …well, I’m not that ticklish there…hm.”

Likewise the D button sent the bulletproof hatch whooshing to a shut over his head. Feeling a cold pulse, he pressed it again in a second before trying the next one.

E seemed to stand for ‘Everywhere’ now as a myriad of hands sprang out to tickle him from head to toe — chin, neck, ears, and all. It took more effort to climb out of the car this time, with about half of the hands tugging on him and the rest still tickling mercilessly. Finally, he flopped to the ground, breathing hard.

“I thought…that’d…just be my ears or something…” he managed to expound. “I might…just have to uninstall that one now…”

Forcing himself back behind the wheel a third time, he flinched as he pressed the F Button. As he’d suspected, more hands snaked out by the pedals, tickling his feet; occasionally slipping into his shoes, dancing across his soles and tweaking his toes. Though, what he hadn’t even thought of was another mechanism popping out to cuff his ankles so he couldn’t yank his legs up. “Huh? Whahahaa?!”

When he reflexively tried pressing the button again only to appropriately hit the G instead, the hatch slid shut, and he heard the hiss of the air tank — though he had a feeling his next breath wasn’t oxygen. Sure enough, his lids drooped as his panic seemed to melt away. He leaned back against the seat, head back as he laughed helplessly but not anxiously.

“Laughing gas…oHOhof coHOHOurse!” he mused, doubling over in a flop, shaking with giggles before he whumphed back upright against the seat. With another instinctive F Button press, more hands were at his feet, just about prying his shoes off as they clung almost magnetically, endlessly rapidly tickling. He could only sit there in a sedated sort of squirm — at one point finding the energy to reach out and claw at the glass, though it did him no good.

As it normally did, the G Button revealed the usual Gizmo Rocket controls. And the last button: H.

It must have stood for ‘Heal’ or ‘Help’ now, because it did pull the hands and the cuffs away, sliding the hatch back and leaving him in a panting slump again. “Thank you…” he bid, perhaps even earnestly to his captors — still out there in the ‘real’ world — and let himself rest, eventually drifting off to sleep again.  
___

The sun hung low as the radio beeped at him. Flipping open the glovebox with eyes half open, Speed offered a sleepy “Hello?”

“Speed! There you are! I’ve been trying to get you all day, where’ve you been?”

Trying to sit up a bit straighter, the boy gave his head another clearing shake. “Mm…sorry. Just out…practicing.”

“At the track?”  
“No. On the roads. The next race is…off-road. So I thought it only made sense.”  
“Oh, well you sound exhausted! Come on home and have some dinner and relax.”  
“Okay…thanks, Trixie…”  
“See you soon, Speed! We’re all waiting for you!”  
“Okay. Thanks.”

With a long, loud, melodic yawn and a rub of his eyes, the chestnut-haired one started up the Mach Five again, turning back onto the road. It wasn’t that far to the house, but he hadn’t quite arrived when he noticed a car behind him following suspiciously close.

“Huh? That’s strange…” He turned his head. “And that’s not good, either!”

He faced forward in time to gasp and slam on the screeching brake as another car pulled right across the road in front of him. Wide-eyed, blinking, he turned his head like a prairie dog between the two other vehicles. And the men that exited them, walking up to both the driver and passenger’s side doors.

“Who – Who are you?” he stammered. “And what do you want?”

“We’re from the IAF,” the one closest to him explained. “And we’ve gotten wind that this car has some special features —”

“Well, almost everybody knows that,” Speed piped up, a bit proudly, regardless.

“— that make it unfit for competitive car racing.”

“HUH?! You’ve got to be kidding!” the boy retorted. “I’ve been driving the Mach Five in races for YEARS! It’s been in almost every race in almost every country — and approved by all the committees there! You can check the records!”

“That’s the thing, we are,” began the other man. “And we’ve been reconsidering.”

With a shoulder-shrugging sigh, the chestnut-haired one huffed “Fine! I’ll give back the trophies and the awards if you want…just please let me go home. I’ve been out all day and I’m tired. PLEASE.”

“Fine, but I’m afraid you’ll be walking,” the first man quipped.

Speed’s eyes nearly popped, jaw dropping. “What?! No! You can’t take my car!”

“Well, the fact of the matter is we can — and if you don’t cooperate, we’ll be taking you AND it by force,” the second went on.

Again, the boy’s head swung back and forth. “WHAT? You’re going to abduct me and steal my car, at this hour, just because some committee’s been talking about what’s allowed and what’s not? Don’t you see how ridiculous this all is?!”

“It’s not ridiculous,” the first insisted.

“And it’s not just talk — it’s the law, new law, whether you like it or not,” the second finished.

The chestnut-haired one shivered as he felt a small gun barrel against his neck. Glancing up at the gun-bearer as much as he could, moving as little as possible, he conceded “All right, all right, I’ll come with you and I’ll give you the car, just…give me a minute to let my family know — especially my father, it’s HIS car!”

Speed grunted as he heard the trigger click, pulse pounding coldly. But it wasn’t a pistol bullet — it was the sharp prick of a dart. A tranquilizer, no doubt, by the way his vision began to warp and blur, another, heavier tug of sleep washing over him. He struggled to keep his eyes open. _I’ve got to…warn the others...Pops, Trixie…I…I…_

Finally, he felt his consciousness slip away, as it had so many times, more often with a painful slam to the back of the head.


	3. Déjà Été Là

It did however, come rushing back with a slap to the jaw, along with a bellow of “WAKE UP!”

“Nnngh…ow, ow…” Half-wincing, the boy looked up. He been sat in a chair, not unlike he’d found himself in the clutches of Model-T thief and Sword Mountain Hell Valley treasure seeker Pug Ugly — though this chair was rather plain. And he wasn’t in some weirdly lavish cave lounge, but apparently just a musty warehouse backroom. “What’d you do that for? If you wanted me awake you could’ve just blindfolded me or something…” he mumbled. Then instinctively asked “What did you do to the Mach Five?” before adding “Where am I?” and a leery “You’re not really FROM the IAF, are you?!”

“Whatta motor mouth!” noted the one of now at least six men, two others of whom stood behind the chair, clamping hands on Speed’s shoulders with a grip almost as firm as metal.

“To tell you the truth, we are!” noted one of his captors whose literal clutches he was currently in. “Or we WERE…but now we’re thinkin’ of runnin’ a little racket…makin’ a little extra cash on the side…”

“And your car’s just the ticket to do it!” the man facing the chestnut-haired one said. “And you, too, of course. Otherwise we really would have left you on the side of that road.”

“It’s an ingenious design AND racing legal!” his other handler noted, even pausing to give his shoulder a pat as he said it. “So we’re gonna take it — tweak it a little, of course! Maybe add some things…a few weapons…and stuff like that…”

“You’re going to steal the blueprints?” the boy reiterated with a double-blink. “Hm. You’re certainly not the first to try and do that. And it didn’t work then and it won’t work now! I won’t let you!”

“On the contrary, Speed, you’re going to help us!” the standing man said with a grin.

“Oh? And just how d’you plan to do that?”  
“Here — bring him here!”

And with that, the two behind him now let go of his shoulders and roughly gripped his wrists, dragging him across the floor and shoving him over a wide, flat, and uncomfortably metal table. Walking around, they continued to pin his arms just past his head. With another more flustered-sounding grunt, the boy peeked up past his left shoulder, though he still couldn’t see the apparent ringleader behind him.

“You’re gonna be our little secret plan mule!” the man said, sleeve sliding down as he held up what looked to be a surgeon’s ink pen. “We’re gonna copy the prints to the letter on your back — kinda like a tattoo, see? And then we’ll send you over to our associates —”

The chesnut-haired one let out a tired chuckle, feeling the back of his shirt tugged and shoved up. “You won’t do that.”

“Huh? Of course we will! What’re you talking about?”

Eyes closed, despite himself, Speed admitted “I’m extremely ticklish there. You won’t even get a single line down straight,” then lifted his lids halfway with a simper, adding “You might as well give up.”

“What? What kinda bluff is that?”  
“I WISH it was a bluff but it’s not!”  
“Whatever! Hold him down!”

Laying out said quickly-acquired Mach Five blueprints on the table next to the boy, the man with the marker glanced between the paper and his living canvas a few times before touching ink to skin near the base of his spine.

“HAHAHA!”

True to his word, the boy jumped again — quite literally, lifting at least three inches off the table before the men on the opposite side thrust his wrists down again, pinning them with both hands now, and leaning their weight on him.

“Ahahe toHOld yohou!” the chestnut-haired one echoed, wriggling as the man quickly scrubbed at the zigzag of a pen mark with a wet cloth.

“Shut up! And just HOLD STILL!”  
“I told you! That’s where I’m most ticklish, I can’t!”  
“Well TRY!”  
“I CAN’T!”

“WELL, JUST—…!” the man began again, but cut himself off, resorting to a brief flail. “HOLD HIM DOWN, YOU IDIOTS!”

The three other men who’d been only observing thus far dove in, along with four more scrambling in from an adjacent room. Two pinned his upper arms, two more his shoulders, one pressed his head down more firmly to the table, and the final pair vised him in place at the hips. Speed grunted with another half-flinch, teeth gritted, cheek squashed on the table, feeling small spikes of pain from their clawing fingers and slightly off-center pressure in a place or two. He certainly couldn’t move at all now, though he could still breathe.

“There. Now, let’s try this again!” the man said confidently, lowering the marker to the small of his back again. He made a straight enough line, but the boy’s steady guffawing still set the whole table shaking, making angles and digits unprofessionally wavy and wavier.

“HAHA! HAHAHAHA!”

“You gotta be KIDDING ME!” the man growled, clutching the marker tighter, slamming his fist on the table. “HOLD HIM DOWN HARDER, THEN!”

“Ow…” the boy grunted quietly, a bit breathlessly. Their combined full weight gave him precious little room to inhale much — which then was enough for the man with the marker to be satisfied in continuing with his copy-project, even while the chestnut-haired one still chuckled endlessly with the occasional twitch.

“HMMmmmhmHMHM! HeheHEHEheh! Heheh! HA! Ahaha!”

Finally, after what felt like hours, he stopped. The other men loosened but didn’t completely release their grip on Speed, who pulled himself up a bit more, sucking down deeper breaths and letting out a last few laughs. He was thankful for the support still, as he now felt quite a bit more dazed and dizzy.

“Now, listen!” the first man said, capping the marker audibly and pocketing it as one of the others tugged the boy’s shirt back down. “We’re gonna send you out to this address — and you gotta be there on time, and only talk to the people we TELL you to talk to, got it?”

“Y-Yessir…mmn…” the chestnut-haired one said with another weak nod.

“…and if that Inspector Detector or any other police come looking for you, you tell ‘em whatever you gotta tell ‘em and get back. Hear me?”

“…Inspector…Detector…”

_“Speed! There you are! I’m so glad I found you — your family’s been looking for you for days, they’ve all been so worried. Come on, let’s get you out of this place and get you home…”_

Just before earning another upside-jaw slap, Speed gave his head a clearing shake and nodded more vigorously. “Yes, yessir. Yes, sir! Absolutely.”

“…Good. Good. Thought you were gonna space race out on me there for a minute. You’re lucky.”  
“Yessir.”  
___

Things weren’t much better on the other end. Once at the affiliated hideout, he was held over another, not much more comfortable table while the same plans were tickles-takingly copied from his sensitive back. And worse yet, he had to endure over an hour of meticulous scrubbing before the ink finally came off — only to be replaced with an equally intricate arrangement of either another set of blueprints or some kind of elaborate engineering code.

There were barely enough men there to keep him steady as he writhed and howled. “AAHAHAHAHA! PLEHEHEEEASE NO! PLEHEEEEEASE STOP! I CAHAN’T — AHAHE! I NEED A BREAK!”

“You’ll get a break when you’re driving back to our pals at the, er, IAF!” their head henchman declared, not relenting with a marker.

“NOHOHOHO!”

And then the boy swore he spied a flash and a sound that almost made his eyes well over in an instant: an honest to gosh police siren!

“Stay where you are!” barked the fedora-clad pointy bearded one, bearing a pistol. One of his men approached the boy as his captors were wrenched away one by two by one. “Speed! There you are, are you okay?”

The chestnut-haired one brushed at his eyes with his knuckles with a muted sniffle. “I’m…I’m fine.” He looked quietly at the Inspector for a moment. “I know it’s not really you…but thanks…”

“Huh?”

“N-…Nothing,” he replied, craning his head back in thought. _And again, it’s so strange that all my enemies would give me a break! But I guess they’ve got bigger plans for me now…maybe. I wonder if they think all of this out or they’re just making it up as they go along? …or maybe they all throw out ideas at once or…or maybe this program is something else, and they can’t always control it but they can direct it a little when it means tickling me out of my mind…hmm…_ He lowered his head, letting it hang, lids drooping almost closed.

“Can you…take me home?”  
“Sure we can! But first, if you don’t mind, we’ll need you for a few minutes back at the station.”  
“Huh? Why?”  
“Those plans on your back. They’re part of some serious undergoings in this criminal ring we’ve been after for a while — we’re going to need them.”

Speed took a step back with a chilly pulse. “So – So you’re going to take pictures then?”

“Well, that…and we’ll need some copies.” The man put a hand on his shoulder.

“C-Copies?” _Oh no._

So much for a dramatic heartwarming rescue. And a short drive later, in a back office at the police station, another officer had him standing against a wall, nimbly tracing the marks on his back.

“AHAHAHA! AHAhahahaHA! IHINSPECTOR, PLEASE! PLEASE! LEMME GO HOHOME, I CAHAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!”  
“Relax, Speed, we’re almost done.”  
“YOUHOU SAID THAHAT AN HOUHOUR AGOHO!”


	4. O Brother, Wherefore Art Thou

Walking wearily in the door, he was greeted by warm smiles and more hugs — but the distance was still there. Looking into his girlfriend’s eyes, he put on the shiniest eyes and cutest smile he could make, asking “Trixie, would you — could you please, PLEASE give me a backrub? I’ve had a really hard day and I really need it!”

She smiled back, even chuckling at the face he made, but insisted “Oh, Speed! What you need is some rest!” Giving him a gentle shove off down the hall, she added “Go get some sleep and we’ll have a nice big breakfast and talk about everything tomorrow!”

The boy frowned, glancing back as swiftly as he could before letting his head hang again, shuffling off like the neglected puppy he was beginning to feel like. _The REAL Trixie’d never say no to a backrub…_ He winced, brushing away the heavier drops clinging to his lashes. _Mmn…even this not-real Pops is right — a real honest to gosh racer doesn’t cry so much. Even if he’s hurt. And something like this shouldn’t hurt him that much. …but still…_

Sighing deeply, shoulders shrugging, frame wilting, he kicked off his shoes and curled up on the bed, dropping off fast into sleep like a beach shoreline beyond the waves.  
___

The next morning, he did enjoy breakfast and somewhat of a calming talk as promised, before setting out on a casual drive with his brother and his twin chimpanzee. They spent most of it mindlessly snacking and swaying and bouncing to radio music — despite all the conversations the chestnut-haired one tried to start.

_Well, I know the real Spritle and Chim-Chim wouldn’t want to talk that much, either. Maybe I’m just so desperate to reach out to somebody I’m expecting too much. But…I know my real little brother would at least say something. Maybe a few more things. Even if his mouth was still full of candy!_

He spied a decent spot to pull aside and park — and was halfway through a steady veer when apparently the smaller boy and great ape in red overalls began to earnestly fight over sweets, swinging toward him and thumping into his lap, wedging between him and the wheel. It was sudden enough that his eyes darted away from the road as he twitched. And the Mach Five rolled too far over, rolling and sliding down an incline that only got steeper. Finally the emergency brake did do the trick — but not until the car had come to a precarious stop closer to a cliff edge than he was comfortable with. And the whole thing had given him almost warlike flashbacks to that all-too-eventful Big Alpine Race.

“Spritle, Chim-Chim, are you two okay?” he asked, looking down. The matching pair craned their heads, staring back up at him with wide-eyed blinks.

“That was scary! But yeah, we’re okay, I think — right, Chim-Chim?” the smaller boy said, turning.

The chimp paused; then quickly nodded twice with a noise to match.

“You really need to be more careful!” the elder boy scolded. “And you shouldn’t fight over candy anyway! You’ve got plenty for both of you and more at home! So you really don’t need to be fighting at all, okay?”

“Mmhm,” his brother echoed with a likewise nod.

Sighing, the chestnut-haired one craned his head back a little, eyeing the top of the slope they’d skidded down. It wasn’t exactly a mountain, but it was quite a long way up. “Now how’re we going to get back up there from here?” _If this was the real world, I’d just use the Belt Tires — but the only thing that B Button is going to do is tickle me! And more! And the Mach Five’s sitting pretty precariously as it is right now! Now what do I do?_

“What’re you thinking about, Speed?” Spritle asked.

“Oh, nothing…just about how I’m going to get us back up this hill and back home, now.”

“Well, won’t some of the Mach Five’s buttons help?”  
“Uhh…well, uh…most of them…aren’t working right now.”  
“Huh? They’re not? How come?”

“I…I really don’t know!” Speed replied with a titter and a sheepish palm-up shrug. _Though, they MIGHT work since it’s not just me here now…but after what happened last time, I’m still not risking it! Besides, I need a break after last night_!

A poor choice of words and tempting of fate in this particularly cruel world, as the other two hopped off him and back into the passenger’s seat — and not only tipped the car further, but sent its trunk swinging out over the edge, and its driver with it. With a signature “Ohhh!” he slid out of the meager lap-belt. At first, hanging upside-down over the back of the car, said belt still looped around his foot. As he tried to pull himself up, however, he felt himself slipping fast, he frantically righted himself like a cat, and found himself hanging on by his fingertips to the back of the seats. He grunted, trying to tug himself up again, the Mach Five dipped, making his arms go taut again, belly smacking against the metal, making him grunt and flinch.

“Speedie! Are you okay?” the smaller boy asked, eyes wide as he and the chimp leaned over the back of the driver and passenger seats respectively.

“Yes, I’m okay!” the taller echoed. “Just…radio for help! Call for Trixie, Pops, Inspector Detector, ANYBODY!”

His heart pounded when they only continued to stare. They shared a glance, though it wasn’t mischievous — yet, anyway.

“Spritle! Chim-Chim! Did you hear me? Get help! Please! Help me!”

And in the most innocent sort of way, his brother then asked “Hey, Speed…you’re always saying we can’t tickle you while you’re driving — but now you’re not driving so can we tickle you now?”

“WHAT?! Spritle, NO! You can’t! I’ll fall!” And now the chestnut-haired one dared to look down. Not exactly the same mind-numbing height as the Alpine Race, but a considerable drop. Though into a river. But it wasn’t a sure shot. And still, hitting the water at that rate would still be more than a swimming dive. He looked back up, eyes wide. “Are you listening to me?! HELP me! Pull me up!”

“Whaddayou think, should we try it, Chim-Chim?” Spritle asked, exchanging another glance with the great ape in red overalls. Who shrugged, though seemed to smile. Now the boy nodded, smiling and reaching down for his big brother’s white-cuffed sleeve. “Tickle, tickle!” Chim-Chim followed suit.

Helpless to do much more than literally hang tight, Speed watched as they both dug fingers under his arms, wiggling and raking. “NoooHOHO! SpriHItle, don’t! DON’T! DohohoHOn’t!” The older boy flinched with a helpless grin, lips twitching over gritted teeth. “Dohon’t do this to meHEHEheheheHEheheee!”

It wasn’t quite as maddening as the mechanical hands — but for the circumstances, it was worse. Every helplessly squirm and twitch and snicker gave gravity another tug at him. His fingers had begun to ache already, but unfortunately it still paled in comparison to the underarm tingling.

The smaller boy let up for a moment, giving time for his brother to breathe audibly a little — gasping when he saw what Spritle had dug out of his pocket. A small paintbrush, certainly one of many Pops had in the garage for hood and trim detail. He’d never even considered being on the other end of it; before today — or whenever it was wherever he was — he’d never had to.

“Does it tickle you more like this?” the boy in red overalls asked, lightly dabbing the bristles under the cuff, making the tiniest curious flits and circles. It sounded so odd — above and beyond anything else, almost puppet-like. Certainly his real brother knew full well how much he abhorred anything remotely resembling a brush, and wouldn’t even dream of saying such a thing. Unless he was being sly. And he might even be sly, but not quite in that way.

“S-S-SPRIHITLE, I — AHAHAhahahaHE! AHAHEHE!” His arms were aching now, but still not enough to distract him or balance out the torture he couldn’t help laughing at. His strength was nearly gone; anyway, it was only a matter of time — seconds now, if he was lucky.

“Tickle, tickle, TICKLE! …Okay, Chim-Chim, now you tickle under this arm and I’ll tickle under that one!”  
“STAHAHAHAAAHAP!”  
“Wow, look, Speed’s really strong! He’s so tickly, but he’s still hanging on like that! …maybe we should tickle him even MORE now…”  
“SPRIHITLE, PLEEEEHEHEHEEEEASE!”

And at last, he felt the metal scrape past his fingers, thankfully wrenching him away from that horror but sending him in a straight drop toward the river and its banks. Some luck was still on his side, sending him sliding safely into the deepest part of the water at a diving angle. For a moment, he wondered if it would’ve been slightly less of a blow if he’d been aware enough to throw his helmet down first to break the surface tension. If he’d been wearing it at all, that is.

After a disorienting tumble and a half, he finally climbed up onto the relatively smooth shore, no worse for the wear, just soaking wet and out of breath — more from the terribly-timed ‘friendly’ fire tickle-attack than the fall and the splash.

The same could not entirely be said for the Mach Five, which finally followed him, flipping a few times before landing undercarriage up against the bottom of the cliff. Naturally Spritle and the chimp had taken their usual refuge in the trunk and popped out as unscathed as ever. They approached him, though said nothing — turning to face the other figures that appeared in short order on the riverbank.

“Speed! Are you okay? What happened?” Sparky came jogging up first, now followed by the brunette, and naturally, the boys’ father.

And, also naturally but simultaneously coldly and unnaturally, the first blurt out of the old man’s mouth was “What happened to the Mach Five?! Why’d it crash like that? Hmmm?! What happened? Tell me!”

Cringing, the chestnut-haired one pushed himself to his feet, bellowing “It WASN’T MY FAULT! I was just trying to park the car by the side of the road, and —!”

“Right next to a cliff? Are you crazy?!”  
“Yes — w — no! LISTEN! PLEASE, LISTEN! We were fine — but it was Spritle’s fault!”  
“How was it HIS fault?”  
“Because he and Chim-Chim got into a dumb fight over some food and they knocked into me and made me swerve off the road too soon! And then we were fine, but they moved around too much and then I got knocked out of the car. I was hanging on — but — BUT SPRITLE STARTED TICKLING ME! THAT HIGH UP! AND I FELL ALL THE WAY DOWN! AND —!”

The man closed his eyes, folding his arms and snorting. “Hmph. Whining about tickling again? Do we need to go back to the garage?”

Speed immediately straightened himself, shoulders high, arms at his sides with fingers splayed, as if he’d been struck by a grounded bolt of lightning shooting back up to the sky. “NO!”

“Well, even if not, frankly, I think you should be punished for being so reckless! You’re old enough! You should know better! And you shouldn’t be distracted by people moving around in the car of all things! Shame on you — you’re really falling apart and I wish I knew how to help you!”

“Pops…I…” And those were the only syllables the elder boy managed to utter before collapsing to his knees, chin to his chest, arms at his sides, but limply so, fingers brushing the riverbank as he remained in a heap. His eyes were closed, but not squeezed shut. His lids twitched, lips faintly twitching, though no misty tears or sound emerged.

Trixie looked at him with a frown. She didn’t add anything chastising, though she didn’t add anything encouraging, either. It was just almost eerily silent. Until Pops spoke again, turning to her and Sparky.

“C’mon, let’s go home. We’ll come back to get the car later…” He gave a stern glare at the chestnut-haired one, though offered a tired smile to the smaller boy and chimpanzee, leaning down to hoist them up. “Just glad the two of you are okay!”

“Yup! We hid in the trunk like we always do, so we didn’t get a scratch!”  
“That was a good idea! Ha, not to mention I built the Mach Five like a tank! So even if it gets banged up, it’ll never need as much repair as some other cars!”  
“So…are you still gonna be mad at Speed for crashing the car?”  
“I am for now — but I’ll think of something to do and then we can at least all move on from this.”  
“Ooh, ooh! Pops, I’ve got an idea!”  
“Oh, yeah? What is it? …heyyy, that’s a great idea! You’re really a smart kid, Spritle!”  
“Heheheheh, thanks! I do my best! …but candy keeps my brain healthy, y’know. Even if it’s not always good for my body. Or whatever.”  
“Hahaha, if you say so!”  
“I just did!”


	5. Wish On a Shooting Star

Back at home, Speed stood similarly quiet, head down, eyes closed as he stood in the living room. However, the next sound he heard sent his lids flying open.

“We’ll take it from here, Pops.”

“…REX!” the now second-oldest boy cried, staring into the grinning face of his older brother.

“Well, hello to you, too, Speed. I heard you had quite a crash today. Pops seems pretty mad…”

“But…you’re…” Now the chestnut-haired one winced. Now he felt more tears, panging sharper than ever, opening watery eyes with a twitching smile. “That’s how I know this all isn’t really real…” he mumbled again. “Because in the real world you’re not here anymore. But…but it’s nice to…” He couldn’t finish — but the oldest boy stepped forward, pulling him into a tight hug, giving him a sort of reassuring squeeze that got a sniffle and a squeaky sobbing chuckle out of the younger.

Rex patted his back. “There, there. Ease up. Pops’ll get over it.”

“That’s not…what I was talking about…”  
“Well, then I’ve got no goshdarn idea what you ARE talking about since I’ve been here forever. I’ve grown up in this house and never left it since we all were little! …you’re just tired…and upset…”

“I am…I really am…!” the second oldest squeaked again.

“Well, then come on over and sit down. Let’s all sit down and talk, huh?” With that, he withdrew, stepping back, but tugging his brother by the arm and flopping down on the couch, pulling him down to a sit with him.

Spritle and Chim-Chim climbed up on the cushion next to Speed. They looked curiously at Rex, the former echoing “Just talk, huh?”

That was a bald-faced trap. No three men in the Racer household alone in a room together would ever simply sit down and talk. Except occasionally about cars and races, of course — but it usually took at least one of the women present to draw out replies to more than three syllables.

Now the eldest’s grin took on a devious curl, glinting eyes darting across to the youngest, who mirrored it as the former said “Well, we’ve gotta do something to cheer Speed up, don’t we?”

“MmmHMM!” Spritle concurred with a solid nod.

“I think I know a little something…” Rex went on, bearing a toothier grin now, sliding both arms under the second oldest’s, and pinning them back — while hovering his fingers at rib height.

The chestnut-haired one glanced back, weakly uttering “No…don’t…”

“Oh, you mean like our song?” the youngest suggested.

Now facing forward, seeing the pair in red overalls locking their arms around his ankles again, Speed begged “No — NO, not the song! Please not that!”

“Well, I was just gonna tickle him a little senseless,” the eldest admitted with a smirk, “but the song’s a great idea too! Ready?”

“Rex! Spritle! NO! Noooho, please!”

“I’m ready if you’re ready! …Chim-Chim’s ready, too!”  
“No tickling! No singing! Please don’t! Please! PLEASE! …I’m smiling now, I’m happy, see? See? You don’t have to!”

To his dismay, naturally, they coordinated another merciless tickle attack while revving up their voices like engines, until they found a prankish melodic stride.

_Let’s tickle_  
_Let’s tickle Speed Racer_  
_He’s so tickly ticklish_  
_He's so ticklish so we’re just gonna keep on tickling_

“OHO GOHOSH, NOHO, NOHOHO, STOP!”

_We’re gonna tickle him and make him laugh a lot_  
_We’re gonna get him in every last tickle spot_

_And when he’s wriggling and giggling_  
_And yelps and begs_  
_Sorry, Speed but we’ll_  
_Still tickle you!_

“WHY? WHYHEHEHE? YOUHOU’RE GONNA KILL ME! PLEASE NO!”

_Tickle, tickle_  
_Tickle, tickle_  
_Tickle, tickle, TICKLE!_

_We’ve got him laughing and he’s smiling wide and wider now_  
_We’ll keep him crazy happy smiling and laughing like how_  
_Just our own dumb brother thing_

“AHAHAAAHAA! REHEX! SPRIHITLE! GOHOSH, AHAHE CAN’T TAHAKE IT!”

_Tickle, tickle_  
_Tickle, tickle_  
_Tickle, tickle, TICKLE!_

The ruckus could be heard very clearly across the house in the den and kitchen where Mom and Pops stood and sat, cooking and reading a magazine, respectively. They paused, looking up — but smiled broadly, nodding and returning their attentions.

However ‘dumb’ it was, like a few other things, it had been real: too many tickle fights — two-on-one in a rare ‘let’s tickle the crap out of our middle brother’ arrangement — to recall had been accompanied by the tune. Some words had changed, been swapped, or forgotten, but the overwhelming message was the same.

And for once in this whole time he had no idea how long, despite the gang-up, despite the tingles wracking his already aching body and nearly numb skin, Speed found himself smiling genuinely through the prods and rakes and pinches. It was oddly the moment of hope he’d needed all day, and yesterday, and in virtually forever.  
___

Trixie came in later to see the three of them snoozing side-to-side again with smiles, the chestnut-haired one leaning on the eldest, while the youngest and his sidekick in mostly minor thievery laying on the second-eldest’s leg.

Opening an eye and spying the girl, Rex reached a hand out to give Speed’s ribs a gentler twisting poke. “Wake up, your girlfriend’s here.”

“Hmm! …hm?” The second-oldest Racer boy’s lids twitched, eyes slowly opening. “Oh, hi, Trixie. What’s up?”

She replied “Well, it sure sounded like you boys had some fun! But Speed, dinner’s ready — and Pops wanted me to remind you about the big race tomorrow! You’ve been practicing, right?”

The chestnut-haired one bristled, gritting his teeth between closed lips. _Oh no, the race! I forgot all about it! And everybody expects me to drive in it in that tickle death trap! What am I going to do? I can’t exactly drive another car…_ “Oh, right.”

“You entered?” the eldest asked, not-quite-smirking again. “I’m proud. Good luck!”

“Thanks. But, uh —” he looked at the girl again “— Trixie, did you and Pops and Sparky rescue the Mach Five? How’s it look? If it’s too banged up, I definitely won’t be able to enter.” He feigned a troubled smile, while thinking _Please be banged up, please be banged up, please be banged up…please be a total wreck!_

With a laugh, the brunette turned up her palms and said “Oh, don’t worry, Speed! Like Pops said, he originally built the Mach Five to be way stronger than that and it turned out to be just fine! Though there were a few things out of place and going haywire he noticed but he fixed them right up and tomorrow morning it should run just like new!”

_That’s terrible! That’s awful!_ “That’s great!” He paused. “Wait, did you say he noticed some things going haywire? What did he mean by that?” _Maybe he did mean the special controls — and maybe he did fix them. But if my luck in this world means anything then that means he probably made them even worse!_ He struggled not to cringe at the thought. Sure, brotherly tickle-torture was even nostalgic, but being tickled by a machine, and one that could literally incapacitate him enroute, was still dangerous.

“You know, I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask him.”  
“You know what? I will! Thanks, Trixie — and tell Mom I’ll be at dinner as soon as I finish up in the garage, okay?”  
“Okay, sure, Speed!”

The middle boy stood up, but felt his older brother grab him by the waist “Just don’t worry about things, or cause Pops any trouble, or we might have to do an encore after dinner!” and made a quick ticklish squeeze that made Speed jump and tense again, with a shiver and a nervous chuckle.

“I – I won’t!” he said, brows convex though he smiled.  
___

Pushing open the door to the garage, he peered in with a blink, then shut it, walking in and up to the Mach Five again. He remembered the first last time he’d stood in this same spot, just watching it warily as if it were some sleeping wild animal that’d wake up and spring up and pounce. And tickle him to death with licks, apparently.

Glancing around, he remembered his father’s trivia trials, shivering, and for one brief moment felt more comfortable sliding into the driver’s seat. He slid his hands gingerly around the wheel, staring down the buttons. _So did he really fix them or is this race going to be really fixed for me and there’s nothing I can do about it now? I still hate to find out, but I HAVE to know…!_

Wincing hard, teeth gritted, turning away with his hand over his eyes, said arm pinned close to his side, he tentatively reached out his other, finger poised to press A, though already shaking enough it’d graze B in a twitch.

After sitting there shaking and sweating for another good few minutes, he let out another short roar and whirled around, clasping the wheel, glaring at it.

_NO! You know what? I quit! …not the race, I can’t quit that. Or racing forever. But if these buttons are going to work, they’ll work. And if they’re going to still torture me, they’ll torture me then — and I can worry about it then and deal with it when it happens! But not now. Now I’m going to get out of here and go have some nice dinner with my not-real family who’re being nice and calm and treating me pretty good for once!_

Suddenly, the cockpit cover slid shut with a jolt over his head with nothing touched, making him gasp sharply and twitch violently to a rigid sit, heart pounding. He stared up at the bulletproof hard plastic that still managed to shine like glass. His eyes hazed, blurring the world around him a bit as the air around him began to feel somehow airier, spacier; floatier, in a way. Strange.

He swore for a moment he saw a bunch of what looked almost like strange faces in the smooth see-through curve, hearing what sounded like faraway voices talking. Where was this coming from? Were they talking about him?

_Is that the real world? Is it really there?_ He reached up and touched the surface — but everything vanished. For another moment, his heart ached. _I wanna go home! I don’t wanna be tickled to death by anything or anyone anymore — well, except maybe Spritle…sometimes…maybe Pops, if he’s not putting me through another pop quiz…Trixie, sure…and of course…if Rex came home…_

He flinched hard, literally brushing his fingers back and front back and forth across his face with the speed of a wiper blade, flinging away tears.

_No, I won’t cry anymore! And when did I get so emotional? A real racer — a real man has to…_

_“A professional racer hasn’t time to help his competitors. As long as he obeys the rules of professional racers his only duty is to win! The only obligation he has is to his team and anyone else with faith in his ability. After this, I don’t think you’ll ever forget that. For generosity like yours the only reward is defeat!”_

It was Rex’s voice — which suddenly left him stunned when he realized what that meant, considering the face he saw with it. He sat there, slumped back against the seat, staring straight out the windshield at the shut garage door. He then heard a familiar, spine-chilling hiss.

In an instant, all the hands à la E Button came springing out, making him gasp — only to feel a ton more lightheaded, neck sagging to one side as his jaw brushed the seat, vision starting to blur more heavily now. But then they seemed to stop, hovering before vanishing in the next blink from when they’d come. Another spike of far-off voices, though he couldn’t glimpse the faces.

And then he simply blacked out.


	6. Courage in Flux

With a groan, lids fluttering, the next thing he knew and voice he heard was Pops’s. “Speed, wake up, WAKE UP!”

“Unnh…nnh…huh? Pops?” He sat up, looking over at the man, standing beside the driver’s side door.

“Speed, you’re going to be late!” the brunette added from behind the passenger door. “C’mon, hurry!” He looked from one to the other, then faced forward.

“Mm, okay, OKAY! I’m going, I’m going!” Reaching for his helmet and gloves, he slipped them on. Starting the car in the usual fashion, he slammed down the pedal as soon as the door opened wide enough.

Hand still on the switch, the boy in the red hat threw out a “Go, Speed, go! And good luck!” as the car peeled off down the street.  
___

The chesnut-haired one wasn’t even sure where he was going — and yet, had a basic sense. It was mostly a straight shot all the way to the starting line. Yet, when he got there, the street and the stands were empty. As he slowed the car to a stop, he spied two people who he swore appeared in a blink. Two women he very quickly recognized.

“Oriena…and X?!”

“Hmhmhm…how do you like our machine, Speed? Or should I say your new life?” the latter asked, turning as he jumped the fender, walking up to them.

“It’s terrible!” the boy snapped back. “Do you know how much it hurts trying to talk to my own family when they’re always much more interested in seeing me tickled than helping me or listening to me at all?!” Taking another step, he glared at her. “I don’t know how you did all this — but I’m going to find a way out of it!”

“Ha! There’s very little chance you’ll do that,” Flux chimed in, grinning. “It’s state of the art — very attuned to you. And on that note, we’ve been going FAR too easy on you. Of course, we only wanted to test it, but now that we know it works and just how well it works we can pull out all the stops!”

Speed only gritted his teeth, sweat beading. “How are you —…you…you can’t! I’ll figure it out!”

“You’ll figure out nothing!” Lady X snipped. “Don’t you get it? We’ve won! We’ve gotten our revenge and we’re going to enjoy it for a long, long time.”

After the two shared a laugh, Oriena added “Oh, and Speed…you’re going to want to get back in the Mach Five. The race is about to start, after all.”

Seconds after her words faded, the usual scene snapped into view. Cars lined up, crowds packing the seats, and another announcer rattling off information. With a slight stumble, the chestnut-haired one leapt back into the driver’s seat.  
___

 _No, I refuse to believe this is the end for me — I won’t give up!_ the boy thought as he managed to pass another car, curving tight to the cliff rail as they headed into a tunnel. _There’s GOT to be some way to crash this whole thing and get back to reality!_

And that’s when a huge chunk of rock from the ceiling suddenly plummeted toward the road in front of him. With a cry, he swerved to miss it, but wound up skidding and slammed into the wall. As a few more cars zipped by, they all seemed to conveniently make it out before the whole thing began caving in.

“Ohh~ohhhh!” Speed hollered, wincing. A quick press of the D Button shielded him from the sharp heavy debris — though as it piled up against the driver’s side door and on top of the hood and trunk, he suddenly felt extremely claustrophobic.

Then the G Button indented with his hands still firmly gripping the wheel. He twitched, feeling a cold pulse when the E Button followed suit.

“Oh! OHOho NOho!” he echoed, pressing as far back into the seat as he could, but defenseless against the wriggling, pinching, poking, grabbing fingers from all angles. In addition to the cuffs that trapped his ankles, another pair appeared gripping his wrists and keeping them close to the wheel. “NaHAHAt THIHIS!”

As before, he gulped down many deep breaths, the N2O made his head light and his vision blurry and swimmy. Surprisingly, in his strangely peaceful wriggling, his mind latched onto the curious thought that it made all the sense in the world for a racing car to be full of nitrous since if released into the combustion chamber it could give the engine a huge though short-lived horsepower boost.

_Heheheh…a car powered by its driver? A human engine, now there’s an idea! HaHA!_

Then an even stranger thing happened. He felt as if he were fainting, but only faded into somewhere else — was it a dream? Or a memory?

It was home, whatever it was. The family room. Everyone was there, all the Racers. A tickle-fight or free-for-all seemed to be going on, they were all laughing at something. He found himself in the grasp of a Half Nelson Pin on the rug by his father, who seemed to withdraw — only to set both hands at his waist, forefingers and thumbs.

“Now for the famous Pops Racer Powerful Pinch in a Pinch!” the man declared, grinning, as he gave his second-eldest son the same sort of quick ticklish squeezes that the boy remembered Rex had used on him briefly.

Said eldest brother as well as the youngest and the chimpanzee all made faux shocked noises, despite all still smirking as well.

Speed burst out laughing with a jump “HAHAhaha! HahahaHA! Youhou goHOt me, Pops!”

And then in another blink, found himself back in the car. He didn’t know how long it had been, but the mechanisms were still going as frenzied as ever. And somehow he still had the energy to twist and kick and laugh. The little cockpit of hell was still blurry as he tugged weakly against the restraints, stealing a stare up at the clear curved surface.

With no light, there was barely a reflection. But it was only his own anyway. He stared helplessly at his own twitching eyes, gaping mouth, and heaving chest before he slumped over the wheel, still giggling.  
___

“Speed! Speed, wake up! Are you okay?”

“Mmmnnn…” With a grunt, the chestnut-haired one lifted heavy lids. The man standing over him appeared to be a physician. As he sat up, he asked “Ohh…what happened?”

“You got in a pretty bad accident, that’s what happened. But you should be fine, aside from a few strains and bruises.”

“Thanks, doctor.” The boy paused. “I-Is my family around anywhere?”

“They should be coming in very soon.”

“Thank you.” _Pops is probably furious at me for wrecking the Mach Five again…somehow. It was an easy miss, but…_

“Well, hello!” the next person to walk in as the doctor walked out wasn’t his father or brothers but a nurse. “Are you ready for a bath?” Another appeared shortly after, pushing a cart with sponges, washcloths, soapwater, and brushes.

“Huh?” Speed said, brow rising briefly. “Well, that’s very nice of you, Miss, but I can probably just take a — nnh — nhg…” He half-flinched with an attempted forward lean, suddenly feeling his trunk and limbs pang sharply and ache.

“Nonsense!” said the latter, soaking a sponge. “That’s what we’re here for, after all. You just relax and we’ll take care of everything. You got pretty dirtied up in that bad crash and it’ll feel nice to be squeaky clean for a change!”

As the first nurse gave him a gentle push back onto the pillows, the chestnut-haired one flung out his arm anyway, raising his voice as he bid “PLEASE, I’m very ticklish! …Tell me you’ll be careful of that?”

His stomach sank as they didn’t seem to respond, his brows sweeping into sharp convexes — before a swipe down his leg made him shiver and jump. “AhaHA! Hahaha! Mihiss, plehease!” Despite an IV or three, he squirmed when she got to his foot; he curled his toes and tried to wiggle it out of her grasp, but she held it firmly, also managing to uncurl them and scrub under them rather mercilessly. “HaHAHAhaha! HahahaHAHA! I – I ahassure youhou I — ha! I cahan’t be that dirty!”

“Well, you just leave that to us and relax!” the former echoed, beginning to swiftly clean around his ears and neck. “Don’t move so much or you’ll only hurt yourself more and then you’ll have to be in here much longer. I know you want to go home as soon as you can so just leave it to us, all right?” 

This got him frowning, and he stopped resisting for the most part — though he couldn’t help still writhing, especially when they got to his trunk. “HAHAHA! AHAAhahaha! Haha! HAHAha!”

Finally, they finished, but now they only lifted him onto a gurney. Skin still tingling; he raised his head with all the energy he had left.

“NOW what’re you doing and just where are you taking me?”

“Physical therapy, of course!” piped up one.

“Physical therapy?” he repeated incredulously. “But my injuries weren’t that bad!”

Once in the room, the boy eyed what looked like a cross between a large tilted table and some kind of exercise machine. He could barely move as they transferred him to it. His heart beat faster as they secured him down, arms out, legs apart.

“What IS this? This isn’t physical therapy at ALL!” he shouted.

“Sure it is! It’s a new model — gets all of your muscles at once; it’s almost like a big massage bed! You’re really going to like it, just relax, okay?”

“NO! I don’t want to relax! It’s going to tickle me and I don’t WANT that! Stop this! Get me off this thing right now!”  
“Don’t be silly!”

“I’m NOT beheing sihilly!” he volleyed back. At first, with a hum, the thing’s motions did feel like a welcome massage, but bit by bit, the patterns and varying intensity or lack thereof distinctly tickled. And there was no escaping it. Laying his head back, he closed his eyes, trying to mentally crawl through the minutes. “HahahaHAHA! AhahaHAHAhahahaHA! HAHAHAhaha! Hahaha! HAHA!”  
___

Wearily, he stared at the wall of his room, until the door opened. With a twitch, he saw it was the younger boy and his chimp. After his last outing with the normally mischievous pair, he felt disheartening uncomfortable being alone with them.

“Spritle, Chim-Chim! You’re here? Where’s Pops?”  
“He’s out talking to the doctor now. And getting some coffee I think.”  
“Yeah, well…he’s mad at ME, I bet.”  
“He sure is! But don’t worry, Speed, he always gets upset.”  
“Not like this!”  
“Well, normally you don’t crash so much.”  
“HEY! That wasn’t —!”

“What’s going on in here?” said another voice as the eldest brother walked in.

“Rex!” Suddenly, the chesnut-haired one tensed. _No, this is just like last night! They wouldn’t do this to me again, not here! Would they? …What am I saying? Here, now, of course they would!_

And like clockwork, the boy in the red overalls noted “Hey, look! Now we can tickle Speed’s feet again! Let’s do it!” and proceeded to do just that, sitting on the sheets and pinning his ankles.

The second-eldest whumphed his head helplessly back on the pillows. “NooHOhoho! LeHEave my feet alone! You twohwo’ve tickled me enough for ahaha! Aha! A weeheeheek!” He opened one eye — then both with teeth gritting as he felt his older brother lift his arms over his head, managing to pin them there with a combination of pillows and a twist of tubes. “Rex! REX! NOnononoNO pleeHEHEheeease…!”

With a sage sort of grin, arms out, fingers poised, flexing just over his armpits, the eldest mused, chuckling “I know it’s not that back of yours, but you’ve always been very ticklish here, haven’t you?” Leaving no time for an answer, he lowered his hands, starting with a steady single finger scritch, segueing to speedy circles that made Speed curl his fingers, pinning his chin to his chest before thumping his head back on the pillow, turning vigorously from one side to the other before launching into a small thrash.

“STAHAHAHAAAAP! STOP! STAHAHAHAP! STAHAHAP PLEHEASE!”

“We’re tickling, tickling Speed Racer —” the other two began.

“GOSH NO! NO SINGING!”

“What’s going on in here? Oh, Speed, you’re looking a lot better!”

“Trihihixie, heHElp MEHEE!” the chestnut-haired one begged.

Spritle paused to pry the small paintbrush from out of his pocket again, offering it up. “Here, Trixie! You can have this!”

The girl peered at it, turning it over in her hand “What a cute little thing!” before looking down at her boyfriend with a snicker. “Well, sure, I’ll join in, sounds like a lot of fun!”

Speed wailed “Noooo, NOO, Trixihiiiiiiiie! Hehelp ME, nahat THEM! PLEASE!”

To his dismay, she took up a seat by the bedside, reaching over the rail to sweep and dust the bristles over his stomach.

The second-eldest Racer jumped, squirming. “MmmHMHMHM! HmhmhmhahahHA! Ahahahee reHEally cahan’t STAHAND it!”

“Hmhm! This IS fun!” the brunette said, twirling the brush in faster circles around and in his navel.

Eyes shutting tight with another thrash before they popped wide, the chestnut-haired one cried with a high-bumped pitch “YOUHOU’RE ALL DRIVING ME COMPLETELY CRAZY!”

The door swung open audibly, an older voice raspily booming “Well, you’ve been driving like a madman, so maybe that makes sense!”

“Pops!” Rex said. 

The four of them stopped, leaving the second-eldest to gaze dizzily between the ceiling and the wall where the pillows propped him, panting. He saw his father lean forward, but didn’t have the energy to move away.

“What happened NOW? You couldn’t maneuver around a rock? Are you a racer or some kind of boxcar rookie? HMMmm?!”

“All right! I made a rookie mistake, I admit it!” Speed found the breath to shout back, a bit wheezily. He opened his tightly shut eyes to meet Pops’s. “But —!”

“AND if I hear A WORD about TICKLING we’ll be in that garage all day and all NIGHT! If that’s what it takes!”

Despite having just been under the same threat, his son twitched, shoulders rising, brows convex. “But…Pops, you’re —“ Staring into the man’s eyes, the boy frowned. _…not the real Pops. Not really._ For a moment, he felt his eyes pang with tears but flinched them away, offering a meek “I mean, yessir.”

“Good. I’ll see you at home. Rest up!” And with that the man stormed right back out, door slamming though softly.

There was literally a five-second silent pause before the eldest Racer brother’s eyes swept from the door back down to his supine brother, then briefly up. His fingers wiggled idly again. “Now, where were we?”

“You heard what Pops said!” the youngest added. “Speedie gets super-distracted easy now so we gotta help him!”

“Right!” Trixie chimed, wagging the brush in her fingers. “We’ve GOT to help him now!” Looking down, she went on, her smile never wavering “This is for your own good, Speed, but you’ll see! You’ll be a better driver than ever!”

Her boyfriend only uttered a breathy “…no…” before the she, Rex, and the boy and great ape in overalls resumed their relentless tickling.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! NO! AHAHAHAHAHA! NOOHO! NOOO! HAHAHAHA!”


	7. Mind Spinout

The chestnut-haired one lay curled up, buried in his bedsheets and cover, almost looking like a corpse in a burial shroud. Except that he tossed and turned for a while before poking his head out. He flinched with a longer groan, flopping over once more.

_Those nurses…after I talked with X and Oriena, it sure felt like they had something to do with it. They really aren’t holding back — I bet Pops or Trixie or my brothers’ll come barging in any minute and tickle me senseless for the fifth TIME today!_

He turned, giving the door a wary glance, then rolled back over, staring at the wall under the windowsill.

_What did Oriena say about this machine or whatever it is they’ve got me hooked into?_

_“It’s state of the art — very attuned to you. And on that note, we’ve been going FAR too easy on you. Of course, we only wanted to test it, but now that we know it works and just how well it works we can pull out all the stops!”_

_Attuned to me, huh? Maybe that’s why it keeps responding to the things I’m thinking about — whenever I start thinking about a bad situation, it happens. Or even if I don’t…but then Rex — I miss him so much, so even if he’s tickling me too, it’s playing on all my fond memories…_

_“Don’t you get it? We’ve won! We’ve gotten our revenge and we’re going to enjoy it for a long, long time.”_

_No. I STILL refuse to believe that. I’m NOT gonna give up and I WILL find a way out of this thing. …’pulling out all the stops’…hmm…I wonder if this machine still has problems, even if it is ‘state of the art’? If it’s not perfect, and it’s probably not, then there’s GOT to be a way I can make it malfunction…or SOMEthing…push IT to its limits, maybe! But how? It’s not like I haven’t been tickled more than I can stand…it must be something else…but what?_

He flopped over again, yawning, and slipping a hand out of his bedsheet cocoon to mask it.

_Wait a minute…they built this thing to torture me and humiliate me — they know I can’t stand to be tickled so much…but what if I went looking for it? What if I even tried to enjoy getting tickled so much? Well, that would sure ruin their plans, wouldn’t it? …or would it? …I was kind of having more fun with it last night when Rex and Spritle were singing that stupid song…hm…but wait, if that’s not it…_

He rolled over, and over and over again, a bit faster before biting his lip and tugging the blankets back over his head, curling up tighter.

 _What IS it?_ he moaned to himself _I’ve GOT to find out! Or infinity billion more days of this! Maybe some more sleep will do me some good…_

Feeling his lids droop with another yawn, he suddenly gave his head a clearing shake, and sat up, casting off the sheets.

 _No! I’ve got to find a way to end this! Now! Well, if not now, soon!_ He glanced around warily, gaze falling to the space between the bed and the wall. _I bet if I’d tried to go to sleep, I might’ve fallen over and gotten stuck and tickled like that. But then if that didn’t happen, how are they going to try and tickle me next? That’s it! Even if I don’t know how to throw this crazy simulation off, I can at least try to beat it at its own game! …sort of._

“Speed!” came Trixie’s voice, sounding rather cheery. “Where are you? I know you’d probably love a nice backrub, come on out and I’ll give you one! Huh?”

_Oh, NOW she wants to give me a backrub? Well, that can only mean she’s out to tickle-torture me even more!_ Back against the wall, he glanced warily out the door and down the hall. _Hmm…I’ve got to figure a way out of this house without running into her! Or Spritle! Or Rex! Or…_

He spied the tapered hood wide open, the older man religiously bent over the engine as so usually often. And frowned, lip rising and twitching a bit.

“Pops! Working on the Mach Five again? So soon?”

“Well, you nearly wrecked it! Of course I’m working on it!”

“But I —” the boy cut himself off with a flinch and a quick shake of his head, then looked on with convex brows and a nervous smile. “Almost done? Why don’t I give it a quick test run?”

“This late? After the way you drove it? Not a chance! …besides, don’t I hear Trixie calling you? Why don’t you go spend some time with her, Speed?”

“But, Pops, I really —!”

“Need to relax!” the brunette finished for him, making him tense and arch his back as she clamped her hands on his shoulders. “You’re so tensed up, you’ve GOT to relax, Speed!”

“Trixie, please! I really don’t —”

“Don’t be silly! Come on, this way, sit down! Relax!” the girl insisted, giving him another iron guided push, practically shoving him over onto the couch. He landed with a bit of a flip on his side, but she pounced, shoving him down on his stomach. She began with a few shoulder squeezes but her rhythm swiftly became unbearably light and prodding. 

Biting his lip with a helpless smirk, he chucklesnorted. Then he glimpsed his brother and Chim-Chim sneaking past them up onto the cushion by his feet. “Leave my feet alone!” he snapped reflexively, managing to turn his head enough to glare far enough in their direction.

“Speed’s right — if anybody should be getting those feet, it should be ME!” Trixie withdrew from his shoulderblades, sliding down to the cushion and taking her feet in his lap. “C’mon, I’ll give you a nice massage, you won’t want to get up and walk for a week!”

Snickering a bit, the boy and his great ape ambled out of her way, up onto his brother’s legs, and promptly seemed to attempt to fill in for a back massage, but wound up tickling him again just as much as she had. The chestnut-haired one outright jumped as they repeatedly squeezed his sides but the brunette held his ankles firmly. As she slid her manicured nailed down his soles and tweaked his toes, making him belly laugh helplessly into a pillow.

He made a last red-faced protest. “HAHAHA! TRIHIXIEHE PLEHEASE! I’m FIHINE! I — GAHAHAAA! Spritle! Chim-Chim! GeHEt OFF MEHEE! STOP! STAHAHAHAP!”

“Hehe! Hey, Trixie! Are we helping?”  
“Not like that you’re not! If you keep this up, I’m going to be here all night working out all the kinks you’re kneading into him!”

“BOHOTH OF YOU — AHAHA! AHALL OF YOU STAHAAAAAAAAP!” Speed begged, but naturally went unheard.

_I have to get out of here! Either the bad guys or my own family are going to tickle me to death! Really! Aah, and how are just these three tickling me as bad as they AND Rex did earlier? Some machine setting, I’m sure. So much for beating it — looks like it’s another game over!_

“Don’t be silly…the game’s just beginning for you, Speed!”

“Huh?!” In that moment, he swore he heard another hiss from Ms. Flux. But then just the usual commotion from his brother, pet ape, and girlfriend.

Finally, they all seemed to doze off — still on top of him, of course. He tried to slip out from under them but they pinned him tight. With a deep sigh, lids drooping in earnest, he gave an unrestrained yawn and let himself drift off at last.

Though not without throwing out one last _I don’t care — I won’t give up! I won’t give up. I won’t…give up…_ brows faintly angled, before his lids closed again and his brain cooled like a switched off ignition.  
___

The very next thing he knew, he felt lightheaded — more than just that, he felt as if he were floating. Yet somehow anchored down. He glimpsed a dim light a darker shade of blue, bordering on teal. Blurry figures turned into familiar faces: all the men and few women he knew had to have been watching him, brows angled though with grins on their faces. They seemed to be standing in a small crowd; then slowly dispersed with some quiet conversation he couldn’t hope to possibly hear. The only one who remained was Oriana. 

Her dark brown bobbed hair hung close around her head, sweeping up just above her pea green earrings; her thin brows lay more softly angled over her mascaraed eyes and long lashes. Her grin was softer, knowing, but almost sympathetic.

After spying the cuffs that kept his arms pinned out at their lengths, lids heavy, he faced forward again, letting out a long sighing breath that faintly fogged the glass a few inches in front of his face, almost like the curve of a helmet. Or perhaps more accurately a fishbowl.

“Is that what you wanted to see?”

Lifting his lids again, he banished the darkness. A chilly wind blew as he gave himself a springing push to a sit from where he apparently lay on a plain park bench. The ground beneath was concrete, but bare, stretching out widely where a road might’ve been. There was a discernible park behind him, parallel to the odd paving, but not much more. Like an incomplete plane in a dream or some kind of simulation.

The evermore inescapable Ms. Flux stood calmly, looking across at him. Speed stood up, walking over to her, facing her down on the missing road. “That was reality? The real world?”

“I told you, Speed — I told you before. You’re in our machine now.” She began a slow circle around him. “You can’t possibly escape. You only woke up just now because I let you… You’re hooked up to all kinds of needles and wires, in your arms and your legs and your head...” At this, she tapped him solidly on the crown, making him twitch and back away.

The chestnut-haired one fired back. “So this is a fake world? Or is it a dream? How many layers does it have?”

“As many as we want it to…” She replied, lids lowering a bit as her grin widened, baring parted teeth. “And you can’t fight back. You can’t disrupt it with just a silly stubborn thought — you can’t even move, you won’t break it. You can barely touch it.” She gave a sweep of her hand as her eyes rose in a mirrored arc. “Beyond this…”

“So you’re controlling me, is that what you’re saying?” the boy asked, brows reflexively angling.

“More or less,” she replied.

“But I know myself — I know what’s me. I’m talking to you right now, you’re not controlling that, are you?”

“Of course not. We want to see you react, that’s the whole point!” She indulged in a noblewoman’s chuckle.

“Then I can move freely, I can control what I do,” Speed reiterated. “What if you don’t like what you see? What if I react the way you don’t want?”

Oriana only dismissively batted her hand with a soft snort.

The boy frowned for only a second. Then looked up and around, taking a step back and briefly pivoting. “So that’s why…that’s why you started out with me not being able to tell if it was real or not. You wanted me to think I escaped — you wanted to see how long it would take before I figured it out. That’s why it’s been my family, my friends, my town, and the Mach Five torturing me…you wanted me to think it was real.”

Flux nodded, eyes locked on his.“Hm.”

“So now that I know…why don’t you just attack me? Why don’t you just attack me now? You can tickle me with anything from anywhere, so why don’t you just torture me constantly?”

Her eyes glided away as she gave a shoulder shrug, as well as an idle kick. “It’s something we’ve never done before. Of course we’re experimenting with it… But I think we’ve figured out all the bugs. Found all the features we want. We know what to do — and we have you RIGHT where we want you…”

Speed gritted his teeth behind closed lips. “How long has it been, really? How long have you had me captive? It’s only been a few days in here, but…” He let himself trail off, looking at her until she finally met his gaze again.

“Oh, a few weeks probably. I’ve lost count… Maybe a month or so.”

The boy tensed, feeling his pulse quicken. _So it hasn’t been that long. Sort of. Maybe they are still looking for me, my family, Inspector Detector…maybe even Racer X…_

“Oh, Speed,” the woman echoed with a roll of her eyes, still smiling broadly. “No one knows where you are — where we are, where we’ve hidden you, and us. Of course people have come looking for you; you’re all over the news, still… We’ve had some run-ins with nosy detectives and private inspectors — but we’ve thrown them all off for days. And we’ll keep throwing them off. We’ll keep jamming their signals and tripping up all the phoned in tips. They’ll never find you. Or your car. We’re thinking of junking it — but you’ll never know. You’ll never know anything that we don’t want you to…”

_The Mach Five!_ Speed thought quickly, then with a rapid shake of his head. _Wait, you can hear my thoughts?_

Shifting in her chair, jaw in hand, Oriana paused, watching the blue cursor blink at the end of the sentence. She eyed the image on the screen beside it before glancing down at the keyboard as she typed a reply. The glow of the portable’s light and the shine of the camera lens hung in her peripheral as she pressed the keys.

“Your thoughts are all you have, Speed. Your emotions, your imagination…that’s all you are anymore. And most of it controlled by us — everything around you.”

 _Then I still have that,_ the chestnut-haired one thought, making her blink, her smile fading. _Surely your machine can’t do everything…if you chase me, if I fight it —_

“You can’t fight it—”  
_I WILL fight it! I’ll fight YOU… I still have…me. My emotions, my imagination, everything you said… I still have enough to resist it. To resist you. And I will! And I WILL find a way out of here —_  
“You can’t, there’s nowhere to go.”  
_There has to be somewhere!_

There was a longer silence between the two. Flux seemed to raise a brow curiously at him, then turn, stepping back and walking away.

 _You made this whole thing to torture me, to humiliate me!_ Speed thought, then resumed speaking. “You want to see me react, do it now! Shut me up! Show me — show me —! …wait!”

His heart thumped hard in his chest as he watched her suddenly vanish like she had before. The wind blew by again, certainly on purpose. This wasn’t the conversation he’d imagined himself having — even if he was only imagining himself having it, in essence. She kept taunting him, she — and they! — clearly went through all this just to tease him, toy with him. So why was she abandoning him now?

Again, he felt his legs buckle, knees hitting the concrete, making him wince. Chin at his chest, arms loosely at his sides, he stayed there in another sail wind-less heap.


	8. No Rest for the Ticklish

Biting his quivering lip after he didn’t know or care how long, he turned, gazing almost longingly at the grass and leaves, walking toward it in a hazy-eyed, hazy-minded stupor. He walked past the bench, glancing back at the missing road — and slipping, stumbling on a patch of wet blades that tipped his balance, sending him forward at a sideways angle. He thumped to the much softer ground and half-slid, half-tumbled down the incline that seemed to grow impossibly steep.

Pasted in leaves, tangled in grass and growth he finally landed backside-down in a rather cold stream. With a groan and a flinch, he struggled to sit — and continued to struggle as he swore he felt the debris slowly tighten around his arms and trunk. Grunting, he flinched again, teeth gritting, wordlessly pushing back against the pull to the ground. He wondered how much of what he felt was orchestrated into his synapses — and how much might have been borrowed from the ironclad sprawl he was actually stuck in. And had he gotten himself into this or had Oriana returned to the controls? Was this a subtle new game?

His answer came in a familiar tingle that made him jump. It felt like many feathery fronds and something with at least thirty small flailing legs in the small of his back, beginning to scale his spine. “HahahaHA…ahahaha!” He tried to get an arm behind him to even attempt to claw the insect off — but try as he did, he could barely reach a hand to his hip. Something else started tickling his side, and he saw the flickering of a stream of ant-like things on the stream bank. “Heheheh…HEHeheheheh! Ah! Bugs, really?! That’s really gross! Even if I’m not a girl! HAHAhahahaha!”

It made sense. Aside from Chim-Chim, obviously, he’d been tickled by people and machines but not really nature. And now the grass blades around his neck seemed to dance even without a breeze.

“Hahahaha! Help! Ahahaha! HahaHA! SoHOmebody help!” he found himself calling out through his chuckles. Suddenly, more skittering legs seemed to flood his back, determined grass slipping under his collar and joining the leaves sliding over his ribs. “HAHAHAHA! NOHO, naHAt my BACK! COHOME OHON!”

He continued to writhe, head back, cachinnating at the clouds until at last he found the stomach muscle to sit up fully and struggle with the flora like so many quickly tied ropes until much like many of them, it audibly shredded, falling away around him.

Now noticing he was quite covered in insects like a thoroughly peppered steak, he let out a short gasp before bolting to his feet and shaking himself off as much like a dog as he could. Taking a few strides further along the stream, he bent down, dousing himself with handfuls of water until most of the things washed away.

Thankfully, he could now reach back and claw the biggest wriggler out of his shirt, giving it a hearty throw. Brushing and slapping away the last few waves on his biceps and thighs, he growled to no one — but maybe an unseen smirking villainess — “If you think I’m taking off my clothes out here, you’re crazy!”

Giving himself another drying shake, he slid a hand over his soaked pockets. For a brief moment he wondered how they were taking care of him day to day like that — and quickly banished the thought. If he came out soaked of his own doing, no matter what or how, he wouldn’t care as long as he finally escaped the clutches of this danged machine.

Another wind gust made him wrap his arms close around him with a teeth-chattering shiver. “Besides, I’ve gotta get inside, I’m freezing!” Sighing, he craned his head back, seeing the park hill turned sharp cliff he’d fallen down. It looked similar enough to the one Spritle had tickled him off of a day or two ago.

Getting his bearings, he realized how far he was from home — assuming Oriana et. al. hadn’t messed with the geography any further — and began walking home.  
___

Home now, he put a hand on the shower glass, frowning. Warily glancing over his shoulder, he muttered “Don’t really feel like taking my clothes off in here, either, anyway…”

Finally, someone he recognized respawned in the empty house. “Speed, what happened? You’re soaked!” Trixie said, tugging on the hem of his shirt. “You oughta get cleaned up!”

Turning away, palm out, brows convex, he said “Trixie, I’ll —…get a shower in a minute. And I DON’T need any help!”

“Says you!” the brunette replied. “Actually, why don’t we take a bath together? It’s been a while since we’ve done that, it’d be nice!”

Eyes widening, the chestnut-haired one’s brows rose as high as they likely could for a moment. After a blink a hard flinch at the less comfortable implications of what had just happened, and another head shake with a clutch at his temple, he repeated “No, Trixie I —…I’ll be okay. Let me just…take care of myself. I’ll…be out later, we could…spend some time on the couch. Then. If you want…?”

“Sure, Speed,” she said, making him twitch. “Do what you want.” And promptly walked off down the hall with a casual, upbeat hum to herself. Something that sounded like a slower version of his brothers’ song without lyrics.

Leaning against the counter, forehead in hands, eyes shut, Speed’s thoughts reeled. _What was that just now?! Was that me, or…? My thoughts…my imagination, my emotions…_

_“Your thoughts are all you have, Speed… Your emotions, your imagination…that’s all you are anymore. And most of it controlled by us…everything around you…”_

_How much of it is me and how much of it is the machine? There’s got to be a way to find out! I have to find out! I’ve got to figure this out, I’ve GOT to! …and I’ve got to get out of here… Oriana, anyone, if you’re listening…I remember what you said. I remember what I saw. I’m sure you’ve got me locked up nice and tight somewhere nobody can find… But I don’t care. I’ll get out of this. Somehow. I’ve gotten out of way worse before. And I don’t care what you say — there is a way to beat this. There is a way to beat you. You don’t have this machine completely figured out — not from the inside you don’t. Whether it’s a game or just a series of patterns…whatever it is, I’ll figure it out!_

With a heavy sigh, he closed his eyes, finally tearing off his wet, grass-stained shirt, pants, socks and everything else, making a well-worn beeline for the shower. And was surprisingly not attacked — no hands, mechanical or otherwise, bursting out of the tiles, or scrub brushes materializing out of thin air. Just a welcoming cascade of warm water. And a full bottle of shampoo. And a fresh bar of soap.

A towel around his waist, the chestnut-haired one stood in front of the mirror reaching for a comb — when he froze with an epiphany. _They’re bored with me! They’ve already tortured me so much, emotionally and tickling…with my family, with the Mach Five, with the hospital…they don’t even know what to do anymore! That’s why they’re not attacking me left and right — that’s why Oriana left. That’s why they all left. That’s why she’s one of the only ones left talking to me and…ecch, whatever happened earlier._

_“How long has it been, really? How long have you had me captive? It’s only been a few days in here, but…”  
“Oh, a few weeks probably. I’ve lost count… Maybe a month or so.”_

When they had first captured him, they’d eagerly laid into him. Especially when he could barely even throw a punch or kick let alone land one before being jarred by fingers at his back or a disorienting squeeze at his side. Pinned to a table, he’d laughed himself hoarse again and again. And they’d laughed, too. They’d been delighted by the absurdity of it. How he was reduced to a toy — a dog’s toy, even, squeaking at a poke or a squeeze.

He smiled to himself, chuckling unprovoked a bit as he slid the comb through his hair. They were only human after all, and even if a machine could come up with every scenario imaginable, it was only a matter of time before even reducing him to tears no longer kept them entertained. Why did he suddenly imagine them all in a room with a nice carpet and fancy chairs yukking it up and pining for the good old days over expensive wine?

Sighing, he peeked out into the hall, calling out “Trixie? I…changed my mind…if you want to take that bath now, I’m all for it.”

“I thought you’d never ask!” And like that, his girlfriend apparated into the bathroom behind him, hands clasped with an eager smile. Interestingly, she was already also in a towel.

He grinned widely now — though paused one last time, looking into her eyes. _Hmm…is this really me? Is it just a good memory? Or is it Oriana? Or…_

The brunette promptly grabbed his wrists. “What’s the matter? Oh, stop looking so mopey!” Her hands went like magnets to his sides, once again relentlessly skittering and squeezing.

Speed jumped, and quite literally, stumbling though she caught him before he crashed into the near side of the bathtub. Arms clinging to his waist, she raked her nails over his stomach, not missing his navel, and dragging them up to his ribs, prod-prod-prodding.

“HAHAHAHA! HAHA! TRIHIHEHEE! TRIXIE STAHAHAP! I CAHAN’T STAND IT! YOU’RE KILLIHING ME! HEHEHEHE!”

“Then don’t stand, come on! You exaggerate too much, you know that?”


End file.
